Chương 67: When the World Screamed (3/3)

Well… I hope. But could he actually use it?

Shi Yan stared intently at the ink diagrams of the human skull drawn on the parchment, his pale eyes tracking each brushstroke with the methodical precision of a soldier dismantling a weapon schematic. The paper itself was thin enough that the weak gray light from the window illuminated the delicate lines from behind, casting faint shadows of anatomical channels across his calloused fingertips.

The offensive sword art failed because I don't have elemental generators inside my body. But I possess auditory canals. I possess an olfactory bulb and a cerebral cortex. The baseline hardware is already installed.

His thumb traced the edge of the diagram where intricate meridian pathways were sketched in faded crimson ink around the temple region. The texture of the aged parchment was rough beneath his touch, carrying the faint scent of dried herbs and old binding glue.

So I think I should be able to use it.

The rope bed beneath him creaked softly as he shifted his weight forward, the straw mattress rustling with the movement.

System. Consume, Shi Yan ordered.

The blue holographic interface materialized before him once more, its cold luminescence casting sharp shadows across the hollows of his cheeks and the faint stubble along his jaw. The light reflected off the pooled water beneath his cloak, sending rippling patterns across the stained ceiling above.

[Directive Acknowledged. Scanning Daoist Text...] [Error: Technique requires upper cranial meridians to cycle Qi. Host Vessel lacks foundational requirements. Incompatible.] Shi Yan didn't toss the book this time while staring at the error message. His fingers tightened slightly on the leather binding—the texture worn smooth by previous hands, the edges slightly frayed—but his grip remained controlled, deliberate. The faint bruises still darkening his knuckles stood out starkly against the pale cover.

The situation was exactly the same as when he looted the Phantom Veil. But this time, it's a cultivation manual, not an artifact.

His breathing remained steady despite the exhaustion weighing on his shoulders. Beyond the thin walls, the freezing rain continued its relentless drumming against the warped roof tiles, each impact sending faint vibrations through the settling timber. Water had begun to pool in the sagging corner directly above, the growing weight making the old wood groan in protest.

So, the System couldn't directly convert the manual because the manual assumed the user was a normal cultivator with a Dantian.

"Meridians," Shi Yan muttered, tapping the velvet cover. The sound was soft but distinct in the damp room—a muted thump against fabric and compressed paper.

"Cultivators use meridians like power cables to push Qi into their eyes and ears to boost their senses. No cables, no power."

His voice was low, barely above a whisper, the words emerging rough from a throat that still tasted faintly metallic from previous exertions. The scent of mildew hung heavy in the air around him, mixing with the lingering smell of rain-soaked leather from his cloak.

But the end goal wasn't mystic art. The end goal was just getting energy to the sensory organs.

His pale eyes narrowed as he stared at the holographic text, the blue light reflecting in his irises like fragments of ice. A drop of water fell from the sagging corner of the ceiling, landing with a soft plop in the growing puddle below, the sound abnormally loud in the quiet room.

Let me rephrase it like this.

System, I don't have meridians. Stop looking for them. Reroute the technique's requirements. Use my [Anomaly] to completely strip the Qi from this manual...

He tapped his own temple with two fingers, the gesture sharp and precise. The impact made a dull sound against his skull, and he could feel the faint stubble along his jaw scraping against his palm as his hand moved.

... and hardwire the technique directly into my physical nervous system. If it needs a pathway, use my blood vessels.

His thumb pressed against his temple as he spoke, feeling the steady pulse of his own heartbeat beneath the skin—a rhythmic throb that measured out the seconds with mechanical regularity.

If it needs energy to amplify my hearing and smell, draw it from my baseline stamina instead of Qi. Turn it into a physical trait.

The room was silent for a second, until…

[System Calculation Request: Confirmed.] [Quarantining Qi-circulation requirements via Anomaly: 10.] [Rerouting technique through physical infrastructure: Forcing dense muscle augmentation to tympanic membrane and olfactory nerves.] [Warning: Physical augmentation to cranial nerves will trigger severe pain.] [Cost: -1, 000 Dao Embers. Confirm?]

"Confirm."

The word left his lips as a single exhaled breath, cold and final. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The instant the command registered, the velvet-bound manual in his hand didn't just burn into ash. It collapsed inward, entirely consumed, the pages and binding folding impossibly into themselves as if reality were being twisted and compressed into a singular point. The leather crackled and disintegrated, the sound like dry leaves crumbling, and then—nothing. Not even dust remained. The faint herbal scent that had clung to the old parchment vanished as if it had never existed.

The next moment, as he expected, the System wasn't engaging in a magic trick; it was instantly ripping the core conceptual data out of the physical object and feeding it directly into Shi Yan's brainstem.

Then came the pressure.

It didn't start as a sharp pain. It began as an immense, crushing weight at the front of his skull, as if an invisible anvil had been set directly upon his brow. The sensation was so sudden and so complete that for a fraction of a heartbeat, his vision darkened at the edges, gray static creeping inward like frost spreading across glass.

Shi Yan's breath hitched. He grabbed the edge of the hard wooden bedframe, his knuckles immediately turning white. The rough wood bit into his palms, splinters threatening to pierce the calloused skin as his fingers dug deep grooves into the grain.

"Tsk..." He gritted his teeth so hard that a sharp, violent crunch sounded as a spike of agony drove itself directly behind his eyes. The pressure intensified—not gradually, but in brutal, escalating waves that made his entire skull feel as though it were being compressed in a vice.

It was as if a needle were being driven into the back of his head, boring through bone and tissue with surgical precision but none of the mercy. His jaw clenched tighter, the muscles along his neck standing out like taut cables, veins bulging beneath the skin.

The sound of grinding teeth grew louder, to the point that he tasted the metallic copper of his own gums bleeding. The tang of blood spread across his tongue, warm and sickeningly familiar. The veins at his temples bulged black, standing out against his pale skin like thick iron wires, pulsing with each thunderous beat of his heart.

It felt like hot, jagged shrapnel was being slowly pushed deep into his ear canals, scraping against the delicate bones of his inner ear. The sensation was intimate and horrifying—every microscopic shift of tissue transmitting fresh waves of agony directly into his brain.

Beneath the skin of his face, a horrific crawling sensation erupted.

The System was brutally, artificially forcing his biology through centuries of evolutionary refinement in the span of three seconds. His face felt as though insects were burrowing beneath the surface, writhing and reshaping the very architecture of his skull from within.

He could literally feel the cartilage in his nasal passages snapping and reknitting, thickening to accommodate a massively expanded olfactory nerve network. Each fracture was a white-hot lance of pain, followed immediately by the nauseating sensation of bone grinding against bone as new tissue forced itself into place. The sound echoed inside his own head—wet cracks and pops that no one else would ever hear.

His tympanic membranes—his eardrums—were being thickened, stretched, and reinforced with the dense, obsidian-like tissue of his Tier-2 Physique so they wouldn't rupture from high-frequency inputs. The pressure inside his ears built to an unbearable crescendo, as though he were diving to crushing ocean depths without equalizing. His hearing dimmed, then sharpened, then dimmed again as the membranes tore and reformed in rapid succession.

Eventually, "Argh..." A low, guttural groan tore its way out of his throat, barely muffled by his clenched jaw. The sound was raw and animalistic, vibrating through his chest and escaping past his bloodied teeth. His entire body went rigid, every muscle locked in place as his nervous system tried desperately to process the overwhelming sensory input.

His body burned hot as the Combat Sieve effect briefly flared, venting steam off his shoulders simply from the sheer metabolic strain of the rapid cellular mutation. The damp air around him grew momentarily warmer, wisps of vapor rising from his skin and dissipating into the cold room. The scent of sweat mixed with the mildew, sharp and acrid.

The bedframe groaned beneath his grip, the wood splintering audibly as his fingers sank deeper, leaving permanent indentations in the aged timber. The rope supports creaked in protest, stretched taut by the tension radiating through his entire frame.

When the brutal tearing sensation finally stopped and the pain receded into a throbbing, dull ache, "Hah... hah...." Shi Yan exhaled a long, shuddering breath. His chest heaved, ribs expanding and contracting rapidly as he dragged oxygen back into his lungs. His grip on the bedframe loosened, the splintered wood releasing his fingers with reluctance, tiny slivers of timber embedded in his palms.

He reached up with a trembling hand and wiped his upper lip. His fingers came away wet and dark.

A thin line of thick, black, impure blood had leaked from his nostril as his body purged the old, useless sensory nerves. The substance was viscous and foul-smelling, carrying the stench of burned flesh and corrupted tissue. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, smearing it across his skin in a dark streak.

[Modification Complete. Technique Acquired: Acoustic-Blood Tracker (Physiological Toggle)] Shi Yan sat perfectly still for another minute, taking slow, measured breaths. His shoulders rose and fell in a controlled rhythm, the discipline of a soldier reasserting itself over the chaos his body had just endured. He ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting copper and salt, then spat a wad of red saliva onto the warped floorboards. The glob landed with a wet splat, dark against the stained wood.

His head felt heavy, yet strangely hollow—as though the inside of his skull had been scooped out and replaced with something both denser and more fragile.

His eyes narrowed, then steadied as he calmed down and raised his head. The blue glow of the System interface still lingered before him, casting its cold light across his bloodied face.

It was time for the field test.

He closed his eyes, expecting the world to instantly map itself out before him. The lids shut out the dim gray light, leaving only the faint afterimage of the holographic text burned into his vision. He waited, his breathing shallow, his entire body tensed in anticipation.

But after several seconds of sitting in the dark, his brow furrowed. Absolutely nothing happened. He just heard the same muffled rain he always did—the steady drumming on the roof, the occasional drip from the sagging corner, the faint creak of settling timber. No expanded awareness. No rush of sensory data. Nothing.

H-hmm.... How do I activate this? Shi Yan frowned, then System, activate Acoustic-Blood Tracker.

The words echoed only in his own mind, silent and expectant.

Nothing.

No response from the interface. No shift in his perception. The rain continued its monotonous percussion against the roof, utterly unchanged.

Toggle radar? he tried a second time, but there was still no result. His jaw tightened with irritation, the muscles along his neck tensing once more. This time, he let out a low groan. Hmmmmmm... Tracker, on. Radar, go!

The absurdity of the commands hung in his thoughts like a bad joke. His frown deepened, carving lines into his forehead.

He paused, feeling a brief, rare flash of irritation at his own absurdity. He opened his eyes. The blue UI didn't respond to his voice. Of course it didn't—he hadn't spoken aloud, and even if he had, the System wasn't voice-activated.

So what should I say? Can you just give me a hint? The frustrating part was that he wasn't wearing a high-tech combat helmet, and the System wasn't a helpful AI assistant listening to his vocal cords. There was no user manual, no tutorial screen, no convenient prompt explaining how to operate a technique that had just been brutally carved into his skull.

He looked at the lingering text on the interface, the blue characters floating before him with infuriating indifference. It had explicitly listed the ability as a [Physiological Toggle].

And when he looked at it... he blinked in surprise. The words seemed almost obvious now, their meaning clicking into place with embarrassing clarity.

Right. It's a physical organ. He had almost forgotten that that was what the Phantom Veil's description had also stated. Not a spell. Not a mental command. An organ—something biological, something that required deliberate activation through the body itself.

So that means... I have to trip the switch myself.

He closed his eyes again and began a slow, methodical internal diagnostic of his own body, exactly as he would sweep a rifle to find a jammed firing pin. His breathing slowed further, each inhale and exhale measured and deliberate. He turned his focus inward, mentally mapping the familiar terrain of muscle and bone.

He tried flaring his nostrils. The cartilage flexed, pulling in the damp, mildewed air, but nothing changed. No surge of awareness. Nothing.

He tried clenching his jaw and holding his breath to artificially spike his blood pressure. His heart rate increased slightly, the pulse in his temples throbbing harder, but still—nothing. The rain remained just rain, the room remained just a room.

He pushed his focus toward the residual, burning ache deep inside his head, isolating his senses and mapping the strange, new topography of his own skull. It was like pressing on a bruise, intentionally seeking out the pain to understand its shape and location. He mentally walked through the layout of his facial nerves, tracing pathways down his throat, along his jaw, and up his spine.

Eventually, his focus drifted to the back of his neck.

There it was.

It was a bizarre, completely alien sensation—a tight, unfamiliar knot of tissue nestled right where his cervical spine met his brainstem. The presence was undeniable once he found it, like discovering a new limb he'd somehow never noticed before. It felt like a dormant, coiled muscle, utterly numb until he actively paid attention to it, waiting for an influx of oxygen and blood to wake it up.

It wasn't like opening a normal eye or flexing a bicep. The sensation was deeper, more primal—something buried beneath layers of conscious control, requiring deliberate effort to access.

So... to activate the tracker, Shi Yan had to mentally reach out and deliberately flex that new, hyper-dense cluster of blood vessels situated at the base of his skull.

He focused, isolating the knot of tissue in his mind's eye, and then—carefully, tentatively—willed it to contract.

As he forced his resting blood flow to violently surge upward, flooding into his mutated cranial nerves, a soft, almost imperceptible click echoed deep inside his own jaw. The sound was internal, organic—like a joint popping or a ligament snapping taut.

Immediately, the universe exploded.